Donal had not accompanied Mr. Sclater and his ward, as he generally
styled him, to the city, but continued at the Mains until another
herd-boy should be found to take his place. All were sorry to part
with him, but no one desired to stand in the way of his good fortune
by claiming his service to the end of his half-year. It was about a
fortnight after Gibbie's departure when he found himself free. His
last night he spent with his parents on Glashgar, and the next
morning set out in the moonlight to join the coach, with some cakes
and a bit of fresh butter tied up in a cotton handkerchief. He wept
at leaving them, nor was too much excited with the prospect before
him to lay up his mother's parting words in his heart. For it is
not every son that will not learn of his mother. He who will not
goes to the school of Gideon. Those last words of Janet to her
Donal were, "Noo, min' yer no a win'le strae (a straw dried on its
root), but a growin' stalk 'at maun luik till 'ts corn."

When he reached the spot appointed, there already was the cart from
the Mains, with his kist containing all his earthly possessions.
They did not half fill it, and would have tumbled about in the
great chest, had not the bounty of Mistress Jean complemented its
space with provision--a cheese, a bag of oatmeal, some oatcakes, and
a pound or two of the best butter in the world; for now that he was
leaving them, a herd-boy no more, but a colliginer, and going to be
a gentleman, it was right to be liberal. The box, whose ponderosity
was unintelligible to its owner, having been hoisted, amid the
smiles of the passengers, to the mid region of the roof of the
coach, Donal clambered after it, and took, for the first time in his
life, his place behind four horses--to go softly rushing through the
air towards endless liberty. It was to the young poet an hour of
glorious birth--in which there seemed nothing too strange, nothing
but what should have come. I fancy, when they die, many will find
themselves more at home than ever they were in this world. But
Donal is not the subject of my story, and I must not spend upon him.
I will only say that his feelings on this grand occasion were the
less satisfactory to himself, that, not being poet merely, but
philosopher as well, he sought to understand them: the mere poet,
the man-bird, would have been content with them in themselves. But
if he who is both does not rise above both by learning obedience, he
will have a fine time of it between them.

The streets of the city at length received them with noise and echo.
At the coach-office Mr. Sclater stood waiting, welcomed him with
dignity rather than kindness, hired a porter with his truck whom he
told where to take the chest, said Sir Gilbert would doubtless call
on him the next day, and left him with the porter.

It was a cold afternoon, the air half mist, half twilight. Donal
followed the rattling, bumping truck over the stones, walking close
behind it, almost in the gutter. They made one turning, went a long
way through the narrow, sometimes crowded, Widdiehill, and stopped.
The man opened a door, returned to the truck, and began to pull the
box from it. Donal gave him effective assistance, and they entered
with it between them. There was just light enough from a tallow
candle with a wick like a red-hot mushroom, to see that they were in
what appeared to Donal a house in most appalling disorder, but was
in fact a furniture shop. The porter led the way up a dark stair,
and Donal followed with his end of the trunk. At the top was a
large room, into which the last of the day glimmered through windows
covered with the smoke and dust of years, showing this also full of
furniture, chiefly old. A lane through the furniture led along the
room to a door at the other end. To Donal's eyes it looked a dreary
place; but when the porter opened the other door, he saw a neat
little room with a curtained bed, a carpeted floor, a fire burning
in the grate, a kettle on the hob, and the table laid for tea: this
was like a bit of a palace, for he had never in his life even looked
into such a chamber. The porter set down his end of the chest, said
"Guid nicht to ye," and walked out, leaving the door open.

Knowing nothing about towns and the ways of them, Donal was yet a
little surprised that there was nobody to receive him. He
approached the fire, and sat down to warm himself, taking care not
to set his hobnailed shoes on the grandeur of the little hearthrug.
A few moments and he was startled by a slight noise, as of
suppressed laughter. He jumped up. One of the curtains of his bed
was strangely agitated. Out leaped Gibbie from behind it, and threw
his arms about him.

"Eh, cratur! ye gae me sic a fleg!" said Donal. "But, losh! they hae
made a gentleman o' ye a'ready!" he added, holding him at arms
length, and regarding him with wonder and admiration.

A notable change had indeed passed upon Gibbie, mere externals
considered, in that fortnight. He was certainly not so picturesque
as before, yet the alteration was entirely delightful to Donal.
Perhaps he felt it gave a good hope for the future of his own
person. Mrs. Sclater had had his hair cut; his shirt was of the
whitest of linen, his necktie of the richest of black silk, his
clothes were of the newest cut and best possible fit, and his boots
perfect: the result was altogether even to her satisfaction. In one
thing only was she foiled: she could not get him to wear gloves. He
had put on a pair, but found them so miserably uncomfortable that,
in merry wrath, he pulled them off on the way home, and threw
them--"The best kid!" exclaimed Mrs. Sclater--over the Pearl Bridge.
Prudently fearful of over-straining her influence, she yielded for
the present, and let him go without.

Mr. Sclater also had hitherto exercised prudence in his demands upon
Gibbie--not that he desired anything less than unlimited authority
with him, but, knowing it would be hard to enforce, he sought to
establish it by a gradual tightening of the rein, a slow
encroachment of law upon the realms of disordered license. He had
never yet refused to do anything he required of him, had executed
entirely the tasks he set him, was more than respectful, and always
ready; yet somehow Mr. Sclater could never feel that the lad was
exactly obeying him. He thought it over, but could not understand
it, and did not like it, for he was fond of authority. Gibbie in
fact did whatever was required of him from his own delight in
meeting the wish expressed, not from any sense of duty or of
obligation to obedience. The minister had no perception of what the
boy was, and but a very small capacity for appreciating what was
best in him, and had a foreboding suspicion that the time would come
when they would differ.

He had not told him that he was going to meet the coach, but Gibbie
was glad to learn from Mrs. Sclater that such was his intention, for
he preferred meeting Donal at his lodging. He had recognized the
place at once from the minister's mention of it to his wife, having
known the shop and its owner since ever he could remember himself.
He loitered near until he saw Donal arrive, then crept after him
and the porter up the stair, and when Donal sat down by the fire,
got into the room and behind the curtain.

The boys had then a jolly time of it. They made their tea, for
which everything was present, and ate as boys know how, Donal
enjoying the rarity of the white bread of the city, Gibbie, who had
not tasted oatmeal since he came, devouring "mother's cakes." When
they had done, Gibbie, who had, learned much since he came, looked
about the room till he found a bell-rope, and pulled it, whereupon
the oddest-looking old woman, not a hair altered from what Gibbie
remembered her, entered, and, with friendly chatter, proceeded to
remove the tray. Suddenly something arrested her, and she began to
regard Gibbie with curious looks; in a moment she was sure of him,
and a torrent of exclamations and reminiscences and appeals
followed, which lasted, the two lads now laughing, now all but
crying for nearly an hour, while, all the time, the old woman kept
doing and undoing about the hearth and the tea table. Donal asked
many questions about his friend, and she answered freely, except as
often as one approached his family, when she would fall silent, and
bustle about as if she had not heard. Then Gibbie would look
thoughtful and strange and a little sad, and a far-away gaze would
come into his eyes, as if he were searching for his father in the
other world.

When the good woman at length left them, they uncorded Donal's kist,
discovered the cause of its portentous weight, took out everything,
put the provisions in a cupboard, arranged the few books, and then
sat down by the fire for "a read" together.

The hours slipped away; it was night; and still they sat and read.
It must have been after ten o' clock when they heard footsteps
coming through the adjoining room; the door opened swiftly; in
walked Mr. Sclater, and closed it behind him. His look was
angry--severe enough for boys caught card-playing, or drinking, or
reading something that was not divinity on a Sunday. Gibbie had
absented himself without permission, had stayed away for hours, had
not returned even when the hour of worship arrived; and these were
sins against the respectability of his house which no minister like
Mr. Sclater could pass by. It mattered nothing what they were
doing! it was all one when it got to midnight! then it became
revelling, and was sinful and dangerous, vulgar and ungentlemanly,
giving the worst possible example to those beneath them! What could
their landlady think?--the very first night?--and a lodger whom he
had recommended? Such was the sort of thing with which Mr. Sclater
overwhelmed the two boys. Donal would have pleaded in
justification, or at least excuse, but he silenced him peremptorily.
I suspect there had been some difference between Mrs. Sclater and
him just before he left: how otherwise could he have so entirely
forgotten his wise resolves anent Gibbie's gradual subjugation?

When first he entered, Gibbie rose with his usual smile of greeting,
and got him a chair. But he waved aside the attention with
indignant indifference, and went on with his foolish
reproof--unworthy of record except for Gibbie's following behaviour.
Beaten down by the suddenness of the storm, Donal had never risen
from his chair, but sat glowering into the fire. He was annoyed,
vexed, half-ashamed; with that readiness of the poetic nature to fit
itself to any position, especially one suggested by an unjust
judgment, he felt, with the worthy parson thus storming at him,
almost as if guilty in everything laid to their joint charge.
Gibbie on his feet looked the minister straight in the face. His
smile of welcome, which had suddenly mingled itself with
bewilderment, gradually faded into one of concern, then of pity, and
by degrees died away altogether, leaving in its place a look of
question. More and more settled his countenance grew, while all the
time he never took his eyes off Mr. Sclater's, until its expression
at length was that of pitiful unconscious reproof, mingled with
sympathetic shame. He had never met anything like this before.
Nothing low like this--for all injustice, and especially all that
sort of thing which Janet called "dingin' the motes wi' the beam,"
is eternally low--had Gibbie seen in the holy temple of Glashgar!
He had no way of understanding or interpreting it save by calling
to his aid the sad knowledge of evil, gathered in his earliest
years. Except in the laird and Fergus and the gamekeeper, he had
not, since fleeing from Lucky Croale's houff, seen a trace of
unreasonable anger in any one he knew. Robert or Janet had never
scolded him. He might go and come as he pleased. The night was
sacred as the day in that dear house. His father, even when most
overcome by the wicked thing, had never scolded him!

The boys remaining absolutely silent, the minister had it all his
own way. But before he had begun to draw to a close, across the
blinding mists of his fog-breeding wrath he began to be aware of the
shining of two heavenly lights, the eyes, namely, of the dumb boy
fixed upon him. They jarred him a little in his onward course; they
shook him as if with a doubt; the feeling undefined slowly grew to a
notion, first obscure, then plain: they were eyes of reproof that
were fastened upon his! At the first suspicion, his anger flared up
more fierce than ever; but it was a flare of a doomed flame; slowly
the rebuke told, was telling; the self-satisfied in-the-rightness--a
very different thing from righteousness--of the man was sinking
before the innocent difference of the boy; he began to feel awkward,
he hesitated, he ceased: for the moment Gibbie, unconsciously, had
conquered; without knowing it, he was the superior of the two, and
Mr. Sclater had begun to learn that he could never exercise
authority over him. But the wordly-wise man will not seem to be
defeated even where he knows he is. If he do give in, he will make
it look as if it came of the proper motion of his own goodness.
After a slight pause, the minister spoke again, but with the
changed tone of one who has had an apology made to him, whose anger
is appeased, and who therefore acts the Neptune over the billows of
his own sea. That was the way he would slide out of it.

"Donal Grant," he said, "you had better go to bed at once, and get
fit for your work to-morrow. I will go with you to call upon the
principal. Take care you are not out of the way when I come for
you.--Get your cap, Sir Gilbert, and come. Mrs. Sclater was already
very uneasy about you when I left her."

Gibbie took from his pocket the little ivory tablets Mrs. Sclater
had given him, wrote the following words, and handed them to the
minister:

"Dear sir, I am going to slepe this night with Donal. The bed is
bigg enuf for 2. Good night, sir."

For a moment the minister's wrath seethed again. Like a volcano,
however, that has sent out a puff of steam, but holds back its lava,
he thought better of it: here was a chance of retiring with
grace--in well-conducted retreat, instead of headlong rout.

"Then be sure you are home by lesson-time," he said. "Donal can come
with you. Good night. Mind you don't keep each other awake."

Donal said "Good night, sir," and Gibbie gave him a serious and
respectful nod. He left the room, and the boys turned and looked at
each other. Donal's countenance expressed an indignant sense of
wrong, but Gibbie's revealed a more profound concern. He stood
motionless, intent on the receding steps of the minister. The
moment the sound of them ceased, he darted soundless after him.
Donal, who from Mr. Sclater's reply had understood what Gibbie had
written, was astonished, and starting to his feet followed him. By
the time he reached the door, Gibbie was past the second lamp, his
shadow describing a huge half-circle around him, as he stole from
lamp to lamp after the minister, keeping always a lamp-post still
between them. When the minister turned a corner, Gibbie made a
soundless dart to it, and peeped round, lingered a moment looking,
then followed again. On and on went Mr. Sclater, and on and on went
Gibbie, careful constantly not to be seen by him; and on and on went
Donal, careful to be seen of neither. They went a long way as he
thought, for to the country boy distance between houses seemed much
greater than between dykes or hedges. At last the minister went up
the steps of a handsome house, took a key from his pocket, and
opened the door. From some impulse or other, as he stepped in, he
turned sharp round, and saw Gibbie.

"Come in," he said, in a loud authoritative tone, probably taking
the boy's appearance for the effect of repentance and a desire to
return to his own bed.

Gibbie lifted his cap, and walked quietly on towards the other end
of Daur-street. Donal dared not follow, for Mr. Sclater stood
between, looking out. Presently however the door shut with a great
bang, and Donal was after Gibbie like a hound. But Gibbie had
turned a corner, and was gone from his sight. Donal turned a corner
too, but it was a wrong corner. Concluding that Gibbie had turned
another corner ahead of him, he ran on and on, in the vanishing hope
of catching sight of him again; but he was soon satisfied he had
lost him,--nor him only, but himself as well, for he had not the
smallest idea how to return, even as far as the minister's house.
It rendered the matter considerably worse that, having never heard
the name of the street where he lodged but once--when the minister
gave direction to the porter, he had utterly forgotten it. So there
he was, out in the night, astray in the streets of a city of many
tens of thousands, in which he had never till that day set
foot--never before having been in any larger abode of men than a
scattered village of thatched roofs. But he was not tired, and so
long as a man is not tired, he can do well, even in pain. But a
city is a dreary place at night, even to one who knows his way in
it--much drearier to one lost--in some respects drearier than a
heath--except there be old mine-shafts in it.

"It's as gien a' the birds o' a country had creepit intil their bit
eggs again, an' the day was left bare o' sang!" said the poet to
himself as he walked. Night amongst houses was a new thing to him.
Night on the hillsides and in the fields he knew well; but this was
like a place of tombs--what else, when all were dead for the night?
The night is the world's graveyard, and the cities are its
catacombs. He repeated to himself all his own few ballads, then
repeated them aloud as he walked, indulging the fancy that he had a
long audience on each side of him; but he dropped into silence the
moment any night-wanderer appeared. Presently he found himself on
the shore of the river, and tried to get to the edge of the water;
but it was low tide, the lamps did not throw much light so far, the
moon was clouded, he got among logs and mud, and regained the street
bemired, and beginning to feel weary. He was saying to himself what
ever was he to do all the night long, when round a corner a little
way off came a woman. It was no use asking counsel of her, however,
or of anyone, he thought, so long as he did not know even the name
of the street he wanted--a street which as he walked along it had
seemed interminable. The woman drew near. She was rather tall,
erect in the back, but bowed in the shoulders, with fierce black
eyes, which were all that he could see of her face, for she had a
little tartan shawl over her head, which she held together with one
hand, while in the other she carried a basket. But those eyes were
enough to make him fancy he must have seen her before. They were
just passing each other, under a lamp, when she looked hard at him,
and stopped.

Donal was too tired, and too glad to be once more in the company of
a human being, to pursue further explanation at present. He
followed her, as quietly as he could, up the dark stair. When she
struck a light, he saw a little garret-room--better than decently
furnished, it seemed to the youth from the hills, though his mother
would have thought it far from tidy. The moment the woman got a
candle lighted, she went to a cupboard, and brought thence a bottle
and a glass. When Donal declined the whisky she poured out, she
seemed disappointed, and setting down the glass, let it stand. But
when she had seated herself, and begun to relate her adventures in
quest of Gibbie, she drew it towards her, and sipped as she talked.
Some day she would tell him, she said, the whole story of her
voyage on the brander, which would make him laugh; it made her
laugh, even now, when it came back to her in her bed at night,
though she was far enough from laughing at the time. Then she told
him a great deal about Gibbie and his father.

So saying, she rose, took the candle, showed him down the stair, and
followed.

It was past midnight, and the moon was down, but the street-lamps
were not yet extinguished, and they walked along without anything to
interrupt their conversation--chiefly about Sir Gibbie and Sir
George. But perhaps if Donal had known the cause of Gibbie's escape
from the city, and that the dread thing had taken place in this
woman's house, he would not have walked quite so close to her.

Poor Mistress Croale, however, had been nowise to blame for that,
and the shock it gave her had even done something to check the rate
of her downhill progress. It let her see, with a lightning flash
from the pit, how wide the rent now yawned between her and her
former respectability. She continued, as we know, to drink whisky,
and was not unfrequently overcome by it; but in her following life
as peddler, she measured her madness more; and, much in the open air
and walking a great deal, with a basket sometimes heavy, her
indulgence did her less physical harm; her temper recovered a
little, she regained a portion of her self-command; and at the close
of those years of wandering, she was less of a ruin, both mentally
and spiritually, than at their commencement.

When she received her hundred pounds for the finding of Sir Gibbie,
she rented a little shop in the gallery of the market, where she
sold such things as she had carried about the country, adding to her
stock, upon the likelihood of demand, without respect to unity
either conventional or real, in the character of the wares she
associated. The interest and respectability of this new start in
life, made a little fresh opposition to the inroads of her besetting
sin; so that now she did not consume as much whisky in three days as
she did in one when she had her houff on the shore. Some people
seem to have been drinking all their lives, of necessity getting
more and more into the power of the enemy, but without succumbing at
a rapid rate, having even their times of uplifting and betterment.
Mistress Croale's complexion was a little clearer; her eyes were
less fierce; her expression was more composed; some of the women who
like her had shops in the market, had grown a little friendly with
her; and, which was of more valuable significance, she had come to
be not a little regarded by the poor women of the lower parts behind
the market, who were in the way of dealing with her. For the moment
a customer of this class, and she had but few of any other, appeared
at her shop, or covered stall, rather, she seemed in spirit to go
outside the counter and buy with her, giving her the best counsel
she had, now advising the cheaper, now the dearer of two articles;
while now and then one could tell of having been sent by her to
another shop, where, in the particular case, she could do better. A
love of affairs, no doubt, bore a part in this peculiarity, but
there is all the difference between the two ways of embodying
activity--to one's own advantage only, and--to the advantage of
one's neighbour as well. For my part, if I knew a woman behaved to
her neighbours as Mistress Croale did to hers, were she the worst of
drunkards in between, I could not help both respecting and loving
her. Alas that such virtue is so portentously scarce! There are so
many that are sober for one that is honest! Deep are the depths of
social degradation to which the clean, purifying light yet reaches,
and lofty are the heights of social honour where yet the light is
nothing but darkness. Any thoughtful person who knew Mistress
Croale's history, would have feared much for her, and hoped a
little: her so-called fate was still undecided. In the mean time
she made a living, did not get into debt, spent an inordinate
portion of her profits in drink, but had regained and was keeping up
a kind and measure of respectability.

Before they reached the Widdiehill, Donal, with the open heart of
the poet, was full of friendliness to her, and rejoiced in the
mischance that had led him to make her acquaintance.